Posted by mdd31 on 2015-11-04 16:44:07

With the number of people coming over to Fumbbl whose only previous experience was either BB1 or BB2 on the console, it might be beneficial to have a section discussing some of the differences between the two. I know this is vague and perhaps difficult to define but it could help ease the transition as well as help keep more people that have made the switch. There are a lot of people coming to Fumbbl who have never played TT and there only exposure is on the console. Anything that can be done to help keep those people engaged can only improve and grow the Fumbbl community.

Posted by the_Sage on 2015-11-04 16:56:14

Good suggestion, thanks mdd31.

Posted by Uedder on 2015-11-04 16:59:56

From what I've seen, I say the first thing to "teach" is turn planning. Explain why starting with a loner block is usually bad, stuff like that.

Explain the numbers behind the things that happen and make it clear that anything can happen in blood bowl. Anything can fail and anything can succeed, so always try to balance risk/rewards. That's the heart of bloodbowl afterall.

Posted by PsykoSamurai on 2015-11-04 17:07:28

Awesome idea! Blood Bowl's learning curve is so darn steep =/ And the amount of information is so vast and spread out that it's incredibly hard to pick out the most effective stuff!

A noob thanks you in advance for all efforts made :)

Maybe consider an addendum for the custom pitch and player portraits as well? ;D

Posted by huff on 2015-11-04 18:27:59

Big job... Should be rewarding for all of us!

Posted by MoltenGlacier on 2015-11-04 18:40:45

Might be a good idea to improve on what was suggested earlier, instead of "blocking with loners first is bad", extend that to the Big Guys. Not everyone will realize that rogres and minos are loners in the beginning.

I always envision opening blocking like "Ok, strength three vs strength three, strengths match, one die block" (and risk the skull, but eh), then "strength 3 plus one assist" (then explain assisting, Guard, etc), then go crowding on taking down a Big Guy, then explain surfing.

Posted by licker on 2015-11-04 18:55:33

It is a big undertaking, and those are always daunting to approach, because the scope can be so gigantic that it's easy to get lost in all the different details you could/should cover.

With that in mind, I would suggest very clearly defining your scope, and your intended audience. If you have to cover the most basic concepts like assists, tackle zones, how dice rolls work, then you really need to approach it differently than if you assume the audience already knows the fundamentals.

Problem here being that most FUMBBLers take that kind of knowledge for granted.

Outside of that issue I would recommend that you do your tutorials by race, and not try to generalize too much. Stick to the specifics of the team you are playing, and the challenge they face against the team they are facing. Probably need to do two or three per race with different matchups. But at some point, the similarities shine through, and you can use lessons already taught in prior installments rather than repeated them. For example while all elfs are different, they are more the same in how you approach (most) matchups.

So, start with a noobie friendly team, Orcs or Dark Elfs, and show what skills matter the most for those teams to be properly developed, then move into actual game tactics showing how those skills matter. Things like inducements and one turning, and more complicated lessons should be mentioned, but IGNORED, until a later installment.

This means you have to IGNORE them in the game you are using to teach with as well. Start with the most simple lessons, take the most basic skills, highlight their uses and values. Do not try to do too much too soon.

Posted by huff on 2015-11-04 19:39:04

Question: What platform are you using to teach? Fumbbl or Cyanide?

Posted by Rbthma on 2015-11-04 20:04:21

Agree with licker here: basics 1st! One thing I constantly see from new coaches is that they don't seem to understand the basic blocking/assist/guard mechanics. When I say new, sometimes these coaches have 100's of matches.

You can see this while spectating or replaying a match: they're constantly selecting/de-selecting the players to see whether they're getting 1D/2D/-2D etc. You will also see them adding extra assists when not needed. This probably leads to poor position on the field. Awesome project btw :)

Posted by Uedder on 2015-11-04 20:50:12

Rbthma, yes. How assists work is not clear to most newbies. You can often see them put assists in useless locations. Like to mark players that are already marked, or placing them in 2 Tzs...

That is a really important part of the game.

Posted by the_Sage on 2015-11-04 21:20:36

Hi licker, thanks a lot for your feedback. Did you look at my curriculum outline (the google doc linked in the blog) though? Before I posted here, I already cut the main concepts into three 'levels of coaching advancement' (as you may know, I'm a university teacher by profession, so I do know a thing or two about managing others' learning process).

In my introductory video, I will start by advising anyone who's already played a few dozen games to skip the 'basics' level, in which I will treat stuff like
how you decide the # of block dice?
What does each block die result mean?
How do block, dodge, wrestle, tackle, and guard affect the aboce?

So anyone who knows these basics (say, who's played a few dozen games) can skip to the intermediate level. Here I treat with more advanced skills like sidestep, frenzy; bash skills (deliberately later to avoid feeding the noob chaos clawpomb spam), concepts like turn sequence and risk management, kick-off events and setups, etc.

To those who already have a solid grasp of that as well (those with, say, a few hundred games' experience), I plan to offer the truely advanced level tutorials:
gameplan, clock management, chainpushing, surfing, OTTDs and 'bloodbowl zen'.
These are ones that I expect might be most worthwhile to FUMBBLers as well.

I do see the potential for the problem you suggest, that the undertaking might be too big, and as such become daunting (I'll need dauntless)! What I'll do is chunk it into lots of little tutorials on clearly defined topics. Each of these I should be able to put together with a pretty high production value in a single evening, and should be worth watching in isolation (for its target audience, which varies per level). This also means I get immediate satisfaction of helping people with a single 10 minute video, without getting demotivated by the mountain of work still ahead of me. I won't be teaching using 'a whole game'; I'll be using small snippets of half a turn each, to illustrate a point, along with a lot of talking head and a diagram or two. =)

Oh and Huff, I will be using cyanide, for two reasons: graphics do well in videos, and cyanide is where the noobs are at (and they need it the most).

Posted by licker on 2015-11-04 21:44:19

I have looked at it now, I think it's a useful guide for how you need to approach the different tutorials, but I think you still need to be careful in the individual tutorials with how much content you actually put into them.

It is very easy to broach broader subjects in many of the basic tutorials, and there might even be good reason to broach them, but, it's going to be tricky to try and keep them all from broadening too much.

It is a very large task, and the mechanics/tactics within a match are far more complicated than can be easily shown I fear. That said, I wish you luck with the endeavor and will be happy to offer my advice along the way. I've coached a lot of softball, and that is not a simple game to teach to anyone, especially 5-10 year olds. So while that's a different process than what you're doing the lessons I've learned about communicating and trying to granualize certain concepts might be helpful.

Though... clearly coaching a sport requires lots of practice repetitions, I'm not sure that part of it necessarily applies to coaching BB. On the other hand it sort of does, the best way to improve is to practice. Sometimes it's worth just practicing how to run a 2 turn drive, even if that's not the ideal tactic for that matchup. I've suggested that to some new players over the years who have asked me for help in scoring.

Though it clearly depends on the team, but they were playing elfs, so I suggested they learn how to set up and execute 2 turn drives. Because if you cannot do that, you probably cannot set up any other kind of elf drive. Longer elf drives are often 2 turn drives where you realize you can stall after getting the ball past the defense.

That's an advanced idea though, but it highlights my approach to helping people who have asked for it. You have to get really specific once you get past the 'general knowledge' phase.

So understanding basic mechanics is clearly step one.

Then recognizing how skills interact with each other, and how building your team/players with proper skills is important to allowing you to execute certain tactics in game. At this point though, you cannot be general anymore. It's not just 'bash skills' and 'elf skills' because elfs with bash skills still do not play the same way as true bash teams, same for bash teams with lots of dodge and even +AG. It's this intermediate phase which is the most important in my opinion, because if you cannot understand how an elf team should be built to give itself the best chances at both 2 turning, and playing defense then any more advanced tactics don't matter.

Same for a bash team that doesn't understand how to run a grind/stall drive. It's not even about teaching how to do a 2-1 grind, it's simply about teaching how to cage/grind/bash your way to a score over several turns. Realizing that if you can do this properly you can then use the 2-1 grind tactic to win games comes later.

Lots to think about. I still think it might be 'better' (at least it seems easier to me) to do the intermediate/advanced stuff from individual team perspectives. That way you incorporate some specific knowledge on that race and how to build/play it, as well as highlighting the key tactical aspects you are trying to show. After a few of these, you can pull from the ones you've already done in newer ones to show where there are similarities and differences among the races (and TVs).

Posted by huff on 2015-11-04 22:00:19

Well I personally think you should use Fumbbl, it will hold relevance and stand the test of time. Also the UI is simplified and people will concentrate on the gameplay, rather than being blinded with the eye candy and animations. You could also make the argument that any beginners should really being playing on here for the complete game as it is meant to be played.

Idk, it's your baby, and maybe I'm out of line here, but I just think that it would be a great opportunity to show your following and beginners an indepth lesson on how fumbbl is played compared to Cyanide. It would also be a nod to the platform they should be playing on..

Posted by licker on 2015-11-04 22:27:41

I agree that it would be 'easier' on FUMBBL. 'Better' is too subjective.

But, the fact that you can mark players allows for much easier explanation of the skill interactions, and the fact that the player cards are always visible in the FUMBBL client with actual skill names, not just icons, also feels relevant.

Maybe you should do the basics in FUMBBL, then do some other stuff in BB2.

I would imagine the turn timer is also an issue in BB2, whereas in FUMBBL you can ignore it completely.

Posted by the_Sage on 2015-11-05 00:55:11

Thanks again for the input, you guys. Based on my experience streaming both fumbbl and BB2, it just turns people off instantly. It shouldn't, but it does. If I can't reach the big crowd of noobs, the tutorial won't have nearly the same impact on the future Bloodbowl community (regardless of where they wind up playing in the end).
I suspect that those folks who ARE willing to look past the eye candy and play blood bowl here on FUMBBL anyway, are not the folks who will wind up needing help the most. I do think it's worth addressing the differences between fumbbl and BB2 in one of the intermediate/advanced classes, after I've drawn them in with the visual splendor. =D